


Reflections on the Vader Question

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: The Vader Archives [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fictional Documentation, Gen, Lineage & Legacies, Prompt Fic, Pseudo-History, Slavery, Tatooine, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12025311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: Further enquiry into the Skywalker theory of Darth Vader's identity, by Anyaval Lilles, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Xôir, Corellia, formerly fellow at Twin University, Tatooine.





	Reflections on the Vader Question

**Author's Note:**

> beatrice_otter prompted, "But! Prompts! How about another acafic talking about was Vader really Anakin, or whatnot, in the style of 'Jedi Knight (anonymous review)'"

Over the last decade, Lalia Maltiras has been attacked and defended with equal violence, denounced as a hack more interested in controversy than methodology, praised as a trailblazing scholar breathing life into the often moribund field of Imperial studies. Certainly nobody with any pretense to credibility can question the fact that her début work,  _Jedi Knight: Darth Vader and the Conspiracy That Crushed an Empire_ , stirred up very real controversy that has yet to settle. Though none of Maltiras’s subsequent works questioned the orthodoxy of Imperial history to so great an extent (with the possible exception of the recent  _Princes of the Temple_ ), they built upon the foundations established in  _Jedi Knight_. Maltiras may be praised, refuted, cited to Dantooine and back, but she cannot be ignored.

Why should she? Even her harshest detractors—and I will say that I have never counted myself among their number—cannot deny her impact. Historians of the Empire often joke that “is Vader Anakin?” might very well be the fastest way to find like-minded colleagues in a crowded room. Thank you, Dr Maltiras.

Thank you, if that room lies on a Core world, preferably in a large and well-funded university. We do not say that; it would ruin the joke.

I spoke of Maltiras’s polarizing influence spreading as far as Dantooine. The usual idiom, in fact, would be “to Tatooine and back.” Dantooine, Core in language, media, economy, in all but astrography, does not make for quite so drastic a comparison. Unfortunately, academic ethics prevent the more effective phrase.

I recently spent a year as guest lecturer at Twin University, the largest institution of higher learning on Tatooine. I need not detail every aspect of my experiences; suffice it to say that I met with few greater surprises than the general indifference to Maltiras’s theory. Every Tatooinian I encountered, from the dean of history to the most uncertain first-year, shrugged off the controversy as a Coruscanti squabble.

“Everyone knows that Vader was Anakin,” one student told me, with what seemed unmistakable pride.

“There’s a plaque,” said another.

There are many plaques, as it happens: those at the memorial house, at the museums of modern history or aeronautics, one at Skywalker Square in Mos Espa (now a large and thriving city, contrary to public image), several even at Twin University itself. For a quarter-credit, any local child will offer directions to his grave. 

If Lalia Maltiras and what seems the entire planet of Tatooine has not been mistaken, Darth Vader lies peacefully among his relations on the remnants of a small moisture farm. The half-burnt buildings are carefully preserved. A few guards keep watch: one, taking pity on me, did double duty as a tour guide. He showed me the old tools for gathering moisture, which Skywalker’s family must have used while he fought in the Republic’s wars; the toy starship that Luke Skywalker would have played with as a child; the bowls of water placed in front of the grave. The headstone reads only  _Anakin Skywalker_ , followed by a transliteration into an unfamiliar language, and dates that would put his lifespan at forty-four years, slightly shorter than those of the mother and brother to his left.

I asked about the water. It seems to be the Tatooine equivalent of leaving flowers. Here lies neither a martyred knight nor a (possible) galactic tyrant, but a local hero.

“He was born a slave, you know,” the guard said. “But he got out. He made something of himself. And he outlawed slavery.”

Historians, including Maltiras herself, have traditionally considered Vader’s antagonism to the Hutts’ criminal empires as little more than a footnote in his career. He did forward the abolition of slavery throughout the Empire and its protectorates (a position that would have aligned him, in that instant, with his putative daughter Leia Organa), and that support may very well have resulted in the measure’s success. 

In the conventional view, formal abolition changed little; slavery had never been common in the Empire proper, and the Imperial bureaucracy took little interest in the legality of Outer Rim business practices. Yet the archives from Twin University—I thank Dean Minha Sandrider for access to them—show a very different picture on Tatooine. We see holograms from Hutt agents complaining of Imperial interference. We hear accounts of a constant stormtrooper presence on the streets of every major population center and many smaller ones. Most importantly, the university has preserved a positive wealth of Imperial reports detailing all manner of crimes on Tatooine, in which “the keeping of a slave” is ranked between murder and the sale of fraudulent droids. 

Whatever the state of affairs on Imperial Tatooine, the planet was hardly ignored. Slavers who went unregarded by the Republic could expect no such leniency from the Empire. The days when any reasonably prosperous merchant could purchase a sentient, organic being had come to an end. Slavery continued exist, but driven underground, chiefly in the Hutt palaces. And in the last year of Darth Vader’s life, the most powerful of the Hutt lords on Tatooine fell to a carefully planned and executed raid. The conspiracy against him was led not by some business conglomerate or rival, but by a small group of independent, pro-Alliance agents which happened to include both of Anakin Skywalker’s children. Eyewitness reports agree that Luke Skywalker presented himself as a Jedi, using a lightsaber or a telekinetic choking maneuver unmistakably reminiscent of Vader’s; Leia Organa, a small, slightly-built woman, strangled Jabba to death with a chain and her bare hands. Even outsiders recognize the events of the following months. Growing revolutionary and secessionist movements, seizing their chance in the weakening of the Empire after Emperor Palpatine’s death, allied together to oust Hutts and Imperials alike and declare Tatooinian independence.

It might be said that I have drawn a straight line between these events that does not reflect a more complex reality. Nobody could assert that Darth Vader won freedom for Tatooine; it is highly probable that he would have opposed it. No single person, at all, can be considered to have achieved independence. On Tatooine, nevertheless, Darth Vader is remembered as a hero of the revolution—a Tatooinian who forced the galaxy to take him seriously, played a critical role in outlawing slavery, and at times exacted harsh retribution against those involved in it.

 _Jedi Knight_ includes no Tatooine-born authors in its bibliography or notes. It does not refer to Twin University’s archives. I cannot help but wonder if Lalia Maltiras ever made her way to the world that she, herself, argued to be Darth Vader’s home. Perhaps her preoccupation with Vader the secret Jedi left little attention for Anakin Skywalker, the boy from Tatooine. We must hope so. We must hope, too, for a closer examination of the man who became Darth Vader—one which considers him not only in the context of galactic governments, but of the small desert world from which he came.


End file.
